Prayer and the Grace of God

Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

The popular understanding of prayer as asking for God's help is correct.
Most of the prayers in the Scriptures are petitions. Most of the prayers of
the liturgy are the same. Even the acts of adoration or love are always implicit
petitions. Why is this so? Why do we need to ask for God's help? The reason
is the obvious one: because we need that help. However, since we are
talking about God and God is not obvious, this cannot be all that obvious as
it may seem.

We need God's help because we are creatures; because we have a fallen human
nature and because we are constantly being besieged by the evil spirit.

The first reason then that we must pray for help is because we are creatures
whom God has raised to an "above-creaturely" destiny. Sometimes I
think we should more often use the expression "supercreaturely" or
"supercreated" instead of the by now prosaic "supernatural."
We have been destined for heaven but heaven is not natural to anyone  except
God!

Consequently, although having been destined for heaven  and what could be
clearer  we are not there yet and cannot get there by merely human or created
means. We need what we call grace which could be described as what we
need but do not of ourselves possess in order to reach the heavenly beatitude
for which we were made. What we have is nature; where we are going is heaven;
what we need is grace.

The Means

Then comes the embarrassing question: Do we mean to say that although God destined
us for heaven that He did not give us the means for getting there? The answer
is yes and no. He will give us the means but we do not have those means unless
we ask for them. Asking for the means to reach heaven is another word for prayer.
We therefore affirm that in God's ordinary providence, we shall not receive
what we need, namely grace, unless we beg for it. This is a hard saying but
it is profoundly true. Of ourselves, not only as individuals but even working
together with other human beings we cannot reach heaven. I and we
need divine grace.

We need divine light and divine strength beyond our natural light and strength
to save ourselves as social beings and barring a miracle we cannot obtain this
light or this strength without prayer.

I once spoke in the beautiful Saint John the Baptist Church in Manhattan, the
Provincial and American headquarters of the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament.
After the conference in a crowded church, we had a procession. I carried the
Blessed Sacrament. More than once I told Our Lord, "You are heavy."
We walked and we walked  it must have been a mile  through all the aisles
of the church. That procession was the social prayer of that congregation praying
and singing as they walked. It was nevertheless a pity when the director of
the people's Eucharistic League that sponsored the affair told me, "We
are not allowed to process with the Blessed Sacrament outside."

Whatever we can do to restore processions in these not-so-Christian United
States will be blessed by God because we need to invoke His grace not only as
individuals but as societies. There are a thousand ways of doing so. Processions
 the last thing I thought I would say  are one way of corporately asking for
divine grace.

No Prayer No Salvation

We need prayer therefore as individuals and as groups to remain in God's friendship.
Without prayer we will lose the divine life we possess, and more obviously,
we shall not grow in the life we already have. In other words, no prayer, no
salvation. This is the basic reason why we are seeing such tragedies among once
apparently strong believers. But being a believer is no guarantee of remaining
one. They did not pray, or pray enough, or pray with sufficient constancy or
perseverance, so the inevitable happened. They lacked the humility to admit
their impotency to keep God's commandments by themselves. In a word they lacked
the grace they needed, and they lacked it because they failed to pray.
And we dare not say that God owes us the grace; that is a contradiction in terms.
Grace is precisely that which God does not owe us. That is why we correctly
speak of begging.

Three Reasons

One who begs asks for that to which he has no right. That is grace! We are
beggars by the definition of our supernatural destiny which brings us back to
the first reason why we have to pray. We are creatures made to possess the infinite
God but He will not be possessed except by those who, when they die, are in
the grace of God. They will get that grace and retain it only if they pray.

The second reason why we need to pray is because we have a fallen human nature
and the correct word is not "falling" but "fallen." Sure
we have been justified and, please God, restored to God's friendship, but that
does not change our nature from having been and being a fallen nature.

As a consequence of our fallen state, we have all sorts of unruly desires and
fears that we call our passions. We need divine help to cope with these urges
which differ with different people. You might almost say what distinguishes
us as persons is that each one of us has his or her own special unique passions.
What turns one person on turns another person off. But, although they differ
so much in their variety, they are all fundamentally the same passions.

Except for Christ and His Blessed Mother  we are certain they were exempt
from the stain of original sin and therefore had no concupiscences  the rest
of us must either pray constantly for the grace to overcome our concupiscence
or we shall give in to our irrational drives. Anger, pride, lust, covetousness,
envy, sloth and gluttony are not only the names of the seven capital sins, they
are the names of the seven capital drives. They are the seven deadly
enemies of our soul synthesized by the Apostle in that one simple word, our
flesh. And these drives, let it be said, are not only in the flesh,
though they go by the generic name of the "flesh," because they are
in our fallen human natures.

These drives, irrational, maddening, unreasonable, persistent, are not only
urges of the body; they are also urges of the spirit. It is not only that our
bodies are fallen  our nature is fallen and that means body and spirit.
And there is no conquering these enemies or even controlling their hostility
except by the grace of God to be obtained through incessant prayer. Why incessant
prayer? Because we have incessant drives! That is why we should not stop praying,
pardon the expression, until a moment after we have died.

People are not naturally humble. Did you know that? People are naturally proud.
Memorize that! Human nature is naturally proud. When you see humility say to
yourself, "that is grace walking," and it is not a woman's name.

People are not naturally chaste. They are naturally lustful, or as the expression
goes, they are natural. Amen! So they are! That is what natural means
 being lustful. They acquire and maintain chastity only if they pray and pray
as much as they need to resist the onslaughts of the flesh.

We are not naturally gentle. We are not naturally self-less. We are not naturally
generous or industrious or abstemious or honest. We are not. My definition of
a split second is the time it takes for an empty seat on the New York subways
to be occupied. More than once I have stood in front of a person who was sitting
and got up. But, supernaturally, I allow the person to get up. I was too late!
That is nature  raw human nature.

Left to our own devices  we do not have to work at it  we just naturally
become ill-tempered, greedy, envious, lazy and self-indulgent. Only the grace
of God can make us otherwise, and this grace is only available if we pray.

As though that were not enough, there is one more malevolent reason why we
must pray and that is the devil. Prayer is dreadfully necessary because the
evil spirit is so active among the sons and daughters of men. No one who sees
what is happening in the world today, including what is going on in the Catholic
Church, should have any doubt that the devil is more than ever at work in our
times and phenomenally successful in leading not just individuals but multitudes
 it would seem whole nations  away from God. With divine assistance available
through prayer we can resist the evil one, but alone and without prayer we shall
be overcome.

Two Principles

There are two principles among others to remember in dealing with the devil:
First, the devil is by his fallen nature (isn't that good to hear?) a consummate
deceiver. In fact, another name furnished us by Revelation for the devil is
"the liar." And the second principle is that the devil, for all his
cunning and deceit, is never allowed to tempt us beyond our strength.

Let us look at each principle separately and see it in the context of prayer.
The devil, therefore, being a liar by his fallen demonic nature, tries to deceive
us by presenting what is really evil as though it were something good. He tries
to hide his malicious designs behind a mask of piety; or if people are strong
on justice, behind a mask of justice or some other specious claim. Hence it
is the capital importance of supernatural shrewdness to identify what may seem
to be a divine inspiration but is actually a demonic instigation.

However, we do not naturally have the light we need to cope with the devil.
We are not naturally smart enough to out-smart the evil one. What we need beyond
what we have is the capacity for discriminating between the two spirits of good
and evil. And for that we must pray.

We need light for many other reasons but there is none more fundamentally necessary
than this one: light to recognize the devil because if we leave it to him, he
will never appear for what he is. He will hide himself behind all kinds of disguises.

Proud persons are no match for the devil. The only remedy for pride is the
practice of humble prayer, though I would add besides praying in general, individual
prayer. While prayer itself is already an act of humility which God then graces
by enlightening us to recognize the evil spirit, we should, in addition, pray
for special light to distinguish the devil from the inspirations of grace.

Secondly, the devil is never allowed to tempt us beyond our strength. This
means that we always have enough grace to overcome the devil but only
if we have prayed.

It cannot be too highly emphasized that when God permits the devil to tempt
us  this does not necessarily mean when the demonic temptation is on us  we
already have enough light to recognize him or enough strength to resist him.
This is no less true than with other trials in life and surely being tempted
by the evil spirit is one of the trials of life. So here we cannot bank on grace
already had. We absolutely must pray for additional light and more courage to
identify and resist the devil when he assaults us, otherwise we are liable to
give in. Only in this way can we be secure.

God sends us trials so that precisely at the moment of trial we might invoke
the spirit of light and the spirit of fortitude in order to be able to cope
with the evil spirit. Otherwise we run the risk of fighting the devil with inadequate
arms, and fall victim, as are so many rash people today who are being overcome
by this master of deceit.

Let me close with a prayer that I hope thousands of Catholics  let me change
the figure  millions of Catholics will once again recite daily to St. Michael
the Archangel. How we need God's grace through the intercession of St. Michael
today!

St. Michael the Archangel defend us in battle. Be our protection against the
malice and snares of the devil. Restrain him, 0 God, we humbly beseech You and
do You, 0 Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, drive into hell
satan and the other evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin
of souls. Amen.